Amman: As part of the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance, Mercy Corps Jordan announced the start of a new phase of a project aimed at enhancing the resilience and response of communities to climate change, specifically floods and heat waves.
The JD2-million project’s main objectives include reducing the risks associated with floods and heat waves, preparing communities to optimally deal with and respond to floods by raising their awareness.
It also aims at implemeting preventive and precautionary measures in cooperation with the relevant national and local authorities and partners in the project and in direct coordination with the National Center for Security and Crisis Management, the Ministry of Environment, and the General Directorate of Civil Defense.
Project Manager, Engineer Shorouq Abu Razzouq, in her statement to Jordan News Agency (Petra), mentioned that the new phase of the project will continue for four years, during which different activities and initiatives will be implemented in the areas of Az
raq, Wadi Musa, Shobak, Dhiban, Mlaih, and the northern Jordan Valley, as these areas were selected based on studies and identifications of community needs in this aspect.
She added that the project includes multiple aspects, such as workshops and programs to educate and empower communities regarding confronting climate impacts and risks, optimal exploitation of rainwater, and engineering interventions such as building check dams and planting trees.
The project will also work to enhance and influence policies in order to gain support for climate and environmental change projects and address the issue of water scarcity and the risks generated by floods and heat waves.
Abu Razzouq indicated that the first phase of the project, which lasted two years, demonstrated a societal need to address the issue of climate change and the necessity of having actual and preventive programs that protect against floods.
Empowering local ideas put forward by local community committees that were trained by the project to impl
ement initiatives and come up with recommendations that serve their communities’ needs and priorities.
In the first phase, which incurred a cost of JD700,000 dinars, Abu Razzouq highlighted a success story involving the implementation of an initiative in the Azraq area in Zarqa Governorate that simulates an early warning system to detect the presence of floods and operating a weather monitoring station to predict the weather condition and link it on “WhatsApp” with the concerned authorities and community groups. Through it, warnings and precautionary measures are sent at the local community level.
While Jordan has been among the first Arab countries to develop national strategies and policies to the negative effects of climate change and the risks of natural disasters, Abu Razzouq highlighted the ongoing need to develop these policies and strategies in light of the natural and climate challenges facing the region and the world in general.
She pointed out that Mercy Corps in Jordan seeks to strengthen its p
artnership with all civil and governmental bodies towards the success of the project to raise the resilience and response of communities to climate change and to ensure a participatory and collective approach for project implementation, especially from members of local communities and their representatives, municipalities and local councils, to ensure the impact is sustainable beyond these programs lifecycle.
Source: Jordan News Agency
